“The villagers were all too eager to give up their cursed relatives.” As he spoke, he walked along with the tables, his hands dragging along as if he was experiencing a nice memory. “We started with the four-tails and higher, but there were only a few of them. We eventually took any fox with a spirit tail. They started to resist when we came for the two-tailed foxes, but they quickly succumbed to our requests. This research has been going on for a while now.”
“You were researching spirit foxes and spirit fire to try to circumvent death?”
“Ultimately, it is a weakening of the soul that leads to death. Those spiritual tails, connect directly to the soul. What we ultimately discovered was that we could take the soul energy from one person, and grant it to another.”
“That’s… what a dungeon does.” My eyes narrowed.
“You’re correct. It’s no accident that the research was carried out in a dungeon. We desired to create a means of enhancing a soul, rejuvenating it. You know, no matter how powerful a healing spell, it will only ever heal the body. Even spells that nurture the soul only purify and refine it. They don’t grow the soul at all.”
Growing a soul is much different than what he was suggesting. A soul was a person’s lore, so it only made sense that the lore grew the longer the person lived. However, just as an old person starts losing their sense and memory, that lore becomes unstable and eventually falls apart. The fact that as the body grows old, it also becomes more susceptible to death, and repeating resurrections damage the soul, it’d no wonder it is only a matter of time before people die.
However, if someone can create new lore, they can graph it onto the old lore, strengthening it. This was the essence of my dungeon blessings. They were a type of lore graphed over my soul. I had an exceptionally powerful soul, and there was no saying how long a life I’d live because of it. I hadn’t thought of it much, but there was a very real chance I could live hundreds if not thousands of years because of what had happened to my body and soul. It was a thought I wasn’t ready to deal with yet.
As for this king, it sounded like he was reaching his limit and was willing to do whatever it took to live a little longer. That meant that he opened up a laboratory and started experimenting on foxkin. I felt that I already understood the majority of what had happened now, but I still needed to confirm things.
“I take it you succeeded?”
“We were close for the longest time.” He sighed. “However, every conduit we created was insufficient. Souls are much too cumbersome, and too much was lost in the transfer process. The souls were ultimately destroyed. Even when we used the soul of a foxkin with another foxkin, it still ended up not succeeding.”
“You would do this to your own people?” I asked in disbelief. “The king didn’t force you?”
“Force me? Why would he need to? Is there something unique because my tail looks one way and not another?” Her snorted. “Who could understand death better than a foxkin? No… I volunteered for this.”
I had been feeling out if there was any level of redemption possible for this man, and he was found wanting. My expression continued to darken.
“I take it, you eventually succeeded.” I decided to keep him talking.
” Yes, failure after failure, I realized we were missing something. That’s when I heard about a certain foxkin who had left the village. They had stupidly sold her as a slave only a few months before we had started our experiments.”
I trembled slightly, trying to keep myself under control. “Lady Death.”
“I needed a nine-tailed fox to complete the conduit, and luckily, I found one close by!”